The Spencer Theorem
by Superpsych96
Summary: A physics final project for school, where I took some main focus points of the textbook and made a Psych story out of it. Nerdy Shawn in college with Gus and Jules of coarse. One shot!


**Okay, so this is my physics final project. I took chapters 1-20(the ones that I could use, some had to be scrapped) and turned it into a Psych fanfic. Hope you guys enjoy the nerdiest Shawn Spencer you will ever see.**

 **XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX**

 **Chapter 1**

"Dude, let's get out of here. This class is more boring than Daredevil with Ben Affleck." Shawn whispered into his best friend's ear. As much as Shawn appreciated physics and the possibilities it gave him, the class was enough to kill.

"We can't just skip class, Shawn. I paid too much too just duck out." Gus argued. "You may have been able to get a nearly free ride by successfully cheating your FAFSA, but I didn't."

"Oh come on Gus, don't be Aristotle's view on the element of Earth." Shawn shot back.

"You are definitely not fire, Shawn! You are not the highest on Aristotle's Natural Place!" Gus hissed.

"Mr. Guster! Be silent or leave, if you don't care for my lecture!" the professor said hotly.

"Sorry, Professor Beck. It won't happen again." Gus apologized, staring down Shawn who only smiled back. "Why do you never get blamed?"

"Because you're louder than me. Also because Galileo was wrong. The center of the universe isn't the sun, it's that sweet head of yours." Shawn rubbed a hand over the fuzzy hair of his childhood friend.

Beck's class finally let out, the weekend coming to an opening. "If he gives us E equals MC squared one more time, he's going to find out how much energy my foot particles have when they're resting in his..."

"Woah, easy there Shawn!" Gus looked around nervously. "You must be out of your mind saying something like that on campus! You know Beck has ears all over MTU." he scolded his easily excitable friend.

Shawn's mind flipped to matters of his trade, never being able to turn it off without actively trying. The world was like the glass board from the TV show Numb3rs, and his mind had no problem throwing up virtual figures like Russell Crowe in It's A Beautiful Mind. He got odd enjoyment from his imaginary graphs he threw up to find random things that no one cared about, such as distance traveled by a car while breaking to a stop. ".003 miles, buddy."

"I don't care how far that Subaru went, Shawn." Gus snapped, hating how Shawn got his kicks by throwing out figures Gus cared nothing for.

 **Chapter 2**

"Now you know how I feel when you ramble about the nutrition labels on my snacks." Shawn said defiantly. Having your best friend being a chemist major was an issue. At least they were both on the same page of using the Metric system over American Standard.

"I do that because you should know what garbage you're shoveling into your mouth, Shawn." Gus may be a pest, but he really did care.

"Just be happy I stopped using derived units when I calculate stop distance and how fast your pizza box falls when you drop it." Shawn defended himself for the sake of arguing.

"I'm done Shawn, I have to go to Calc II now."

"See ya buddy." Shawn passed his friend and headed to his little Yamaha dirt bike. It took quite a bit of time and money he didn't have to make it street legal. He pulled his helmet off and looked at the blonde girl currently making a line straight for him.

 _Distance in meters divided by meters traveled per second yields time in seconds of arrival... 3, 2, 1!_ "Jules! What brings a Lion into Husky territory?" Shawn asked playfully.

"Oh, not much. I wanted to see if you wanted to hang out, maybe study for a while?" Juliet asked, moving a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

Shawn scoffed before answering, "Does Isaac Newton play with apples and secretly hunt for the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Um... yes?" Juliet knew enough about apples, but wasn't aware about Newton's dabbles in alchemy.

"I might go a little easy on the studying though." Shawn pointed out. "You know how I feel about books."

Juliet rolled her eyes at her friend's playfulness. "Books are not out to purposefully cut you, Shawn Spencer."

"You don't know that." Shawn responded childishly. "5th and Elm?" Shawn suggested his favorite coffee shop. He always felt Cyberia was for tools and hippies. 5th and Elm was for his kind of people.

Juliet watched Shawn's blank expression and his fingers twitching at his side. Most people thought he was mentally deficient, but Juliet knew better. "What's going up on the board today, Professor Spencer?" she asked with a smile, knowing he hated being called that. He didn't like the idea of being like his dad. At all.

"If you must know, Ms. O'Hara, I have created a graph of the distance from where we now stand, in meters of course, and calculated your average walking speed in meters per minute to tell me just how long it'll be till we get there." Shawn explained with a pleased smile.

"Why aren't you in my head during my criminal justice classes?" Juliet asked him in mock frustration.

"I'm not?" It was Shawn's turn to act, faking heart ache. "15.35 minutes, by the way."

 _Velocity equals distance divided by time... say six meters away... Moving slow enough there, bud?_ Shawn internally questioned. "That guy's hung over." Shawn pointed the man who brought them their drinks and walked back behind the counter.

"Because there's no way he could walk a straight line or look into the light, or did you find his velocity by an educated guess?" Juliet asked, smirking over her macchiato.

"You have your way Jules, and I have mine." Shawn smiled back. "So, when's our next field trip?"

"MY next field trip will be next time someone breaks the law." Juliet emphasized the me part. It might as well be "theirs" though. He was always trailing along, giving her hints. She was more than competent on her own, but add Shawn's super power and Gus's sometimes useful chemistry knowledge, and she was unbeatable.

Nobody really knew how, including himself, why he could get the figures so close without a watch or speedometer. It was a six sense, practically.

"So what's the plan for the weekend?" Juliet tilted her head to the side slightly and smiled wide.

It took him a while before he could do anything beside smile back. He swore she was the most precious thing he had ever seen. "I don't know yet. Not a lot, really. There's an oddball play at the Rozsa Center Saturday. I'll probably go to that."

"Ooh!" Juliet exclaimed happily. Shawn wasn't the cultural play or orchestra theater kind. If he went to an art center, it was for an off the wall oddity that would catch you off guard, but be totally worth admission and more. "Any guess how long it is?"

She didn't get the overly complicated response she expected. "Two, three hours knowing this troop." Shawn answered plainly and shrugging his shoulders.

"That's it? No equation or throwing up figures?" Juliet asked surprised.

Shawn put his cup down and smiled before answering. "Not on this one, Jules. Too many independent variables, not enough dependents. The players themselves are independent variables from year to year. The best dependent we have is the show, but everybody does it just a little bit differently." Shawn leaned forward and held his thumb and forefinger no more than one centimeter apart. His turned up towards the ceiling in thought. "Maybe I could make a linear relationship graph with a list of the play's independent and dependent variables..."

"Does the laws of physics allow for human error and individual persons as independent variables?" Juliet questioned, loving the surprised and shocked look on her friend's face.

"I don't think an inverse or quadratic relationship graph will tell us either." Shawn said disappointedly.

 **Chapter 3**

Shawn woke up to the buzzing of iPhone, still ticked about losing that bet with Gus. Wild Horses by the Rolling Stones wasn't the best ringtone to have at this juncture in his life.

"Jules, it's too early in the winter for this." Shawn rubbed his lightly stubbled face, trying to wake up enough to talk to the girl.

"You mean in the morning?" she asked confused.

"That to." Shawn let it go. "What's up?" he let his head fall back to the pillow and enjoyed the feel of his flannel sheets.

"Field trip." Shawn could hear her smiling even over the phone.

"Tell me where and give me ten minutes."

"Can we get on the roof?" Shawn asked,turning to Sergeant Carlton Lassiter of the Hancock PD.

"Spencer, why the Hell do you want up on the roof? Isn't it bad enough we have to be near the hydroponics shop at all?" Lassiter questioned, not looking forward to extra work at 3:00 in the morning.

"Because I need to stand where he did, I need his reference point." Shawn wiggled his right hand fingers in front of him at arms length, his left middle and index fingers pointed to his temple.

"Shawn, what are you doing?" Juliet asked rolling her eyes, her voice sounding tired.

Shawn dropped his arms and turned to them, looking defeated. "Lassie, we have to get up there. I need his reference point. I need to see what he saw, see if he was pushed, or if he jumped." Shawn explained.

"You think it was murder?" Juliet asked, eyebrows pursed together and get voice full of disbelief.

"Come on Spencer, I've been a cop in this town for years. I can't remember if I ever had a murder. This Hancock, for crying out loud."

"Well we won't know unless we get up on the roof, now will we!" Shawn argued, losing his patience. Why bring him down there at 3:00 AM if they're not going to listen?

"Alright Spencer, got anything?" Lassiter asked, not expecting much of anything.

"The body fell here, or was pushed here." He pointed to where Lassiter had marked it off with tape. "Look at the position here, the distance from our reference point and point C, this car." Shawn pointed out to Juliet, watching and taking notes very intently. She was the picture of diligence. "I'd put the distance between us and point C to about... Eight inches." he decided, making an odd sawing motion with his arm and one eye closed.

"That car is about four and s half feet from this ledge in a straight line." Lassiter added. "The guy was pretty fit. He easily could have made the jump to the car if he was trying to starfish flop it."

"Good job Lassie!" Shawn praised like Lassiter was a puppy. "I'm feeling murder on this one. "Lassie, check if there's any sign of displacement after the body hit the ground, if there was any movement. Was he touched or dragged after, you know?"

"I got it, Spencer. I'll also check the body for signs of struggles, see what the autopsy says.

"Lassie, see if you can get a time interval from ToD to when you arrived on scene." Shawn ordered, almost as if he was Chief Raffeli himself.

"I'll see what I can do, but no promises." Lassiter mock saluted and took his leave, the two college students alone now on the roof.

"I can't get an average velocity guess yet without knowing his wait. Distance is easy, but time of fall is all about gravity, which I need his weight. He's falling vertical instead of moving horizontal, the little jerk." Shawn scowled as they too decided to try to go home for some sleep.

 **Chapter 4**

Shawn and Juliet sat patiently together in her little Volkswagen Beetle. This light seemed to stay red forever, and the students migrating across the highway seemed endless.

Shawn's patience began to drop with each passing second. "God, what is this? The opening scene of Ice Age?" The light finally turned, and a quick table flew up before his eyes. _Change in velocity divided by time/change in time!_ "Jules, if you were a cop you could have totally busted that guy for over acceleration."

"I totally forgot that was a thing!" Juliet told him. "Lassiter doesn't even care when lets me ride along.

"Sometimes you just have to throw up some average velocity figures." Shawn shrugged, not making anything of it. "Someone's cruise control is broken." Shawn looked at the car next to him. "That guy has no constant acceleration."

"Maybe his foot itches and he's tapping the pedal." Juliet said jokingly. Juliet jumped slightly when her phone rang. She dug in her pocket briefly and came up with the little smart phone. "Here. Can you answer that, please?"

"Really Jules, you won't even answer the phone behind the wheel?" Shawn asked quizzically.

"Heck no. As a criminal justice student I know far better than that." Shawn finally took the phone just before the final ring.

"Hello? This is Juliet." Shawn answered, knowing it was Lassiter.

"Shawn, why do I sound like a prepubescent boy?!" Juliet hissed quietly.

"O'Hara, what's a matter with you? Are you sick?" Lassiter sound deeply concerned.

"Um, no... kind of. It's my lady time, you know?" Shawn kept up the charade.

"Shawn!" Juliet punched his arm forcefully.

"What's up Lassie?" Shawn spoke in regular tone while rubbing his arm.

"Spencer? Oh good God. I'd rather talk to O'Hara during 'lady time'." Lassiter said gravely.

"Got autopsy goodies yet?" Shawn asked a little to excited for comfort.

"Yeah, it didn't take long." Lassiter said, not too happy about what came next. "You were uh... um..."

"Awww, it's okay Lassie, you can say I was right!" Shawn verbally nudged.

"Time of death was two hours before the first call came in. There's no way it took two hours for someone to notice a dead body in main street. He had to have been thrown."

"So we're looking at two people, at least." Shawn concluded. "Talk to you later, Lassie." Shawn hung up, and rested his head on the back of the seat. Shawn tried to picture the body disposal in his mind. _Three stories up, gravity has downward velocity of -9.8 m/s..._

"Shawn, everything okay?" Juliet pulled into the parking lot of the Rozsa Center, her attention focused on her spaced out friend.

"Yeah, everything's fine Jules. I thought I had something on the case but no cigars."

 **Chapter 5**

"Lassie, since when do we meet up when you're out of uniform?" Shawn questioned, sucking fiercely from his straw.

"Shawn, really? You're a twenty year old man and you still order chocolate milk?" Juliet asked incredulously.

"You're damn right I do." Shawn answered confidently, Gus pointed in his direction and nodded his head. "He gets it. You are never too old for chocolaty goodness in the morning."

"I'm not, but that's because I'm a girl, and I'm cute." Juliet smiled around her straw.

"The girl part is true but not entirely fair. As for the cute part, that is %100 true. You know I'm adorable though, so that's negated." Shawn playfully fought back, causing Juliet to blush.

"Can we please focus on why I called us all here!" Lassiter exclaimed a little too loud, drawing the attention of the other Kaleva Café diners.

"Because a dude is dead?" Gus asked, Shawn having previously filling him in with facts and his own hair brain ideas.

"Strong with this one, the Force is!" Shawn did his best Yoda impression. "Get it, because he was pushed slash thrown?" Shawn had a pleased smile but the others stared at him like he was on fire. He decided it best to make sure he wasn't, just to be safe.

"I want to get this figured out. I don't like the idea of a murderer in my little town." Lassiter drank deeply from his undersized coffee cup.

"This would be a lot easier if Earth had the same gravitational force as the moon..." Shawn thought aloud. "The poor guy should have looked into rearranging his electromagnetic force from shatterable to strength and squeeze."

"That's not even possible, Shawn. You asked Professor Beck if it was on day one!" Gus snapped. Shawn had some odd ideas that would be cool, but didn't make any sense whatsoever.

"Spencer, how did you know exactly where the vic was if no one saw him jump?" Lassiter asked, questioning Shawn's ability.

"Blood trail, buddy. It stopped where I stood and began on the ground again. It's also how I knew he was murdered." Shawn drummed his fingers on the table, staring off into space. "Next question, why was he thrown? What do we know about this guy?"

Lassiter blabbed about who the guy was while Shawn's head went to work. _F equals mass times accel. Accel is 9.8 per second compounded, factor that mass..._ "They really hated this guy Lassie, they whipped him good off that roof."

"So the people who threw him are the ones who killed him, you think?" Juliet watched him, fully tuned in for his response.

"That's what I'm thinking." Shawn confirmed.

 **Chapter 9**

"Lassie, floor it!" Shawn yelled from the back seat at the engaged police sergeant. "We already have the mass, but we need more velocity than this if we're going to smoke this sucker!"

"Damn it Spencer, if you say one more thing about gaining momentum to drive him off the road, I will discharge my weapon in your face!" Lassiter yelled in a way that would make Chris Farley proud.

"Fine, kick up speed and cut the time. The change in time and velocity will increase, allowing more force for impulse! We can get him, just let the left foot drop!" Shawn rattled, his face red from speed talking.

"Open that door and roll out of the car!" Lassiter gripped the wheel tighter. "Do you ever shut that trap?"

"Um, not during exam season, I don't." Shawn rolled his eyes and smiled childishly. "I gotta stay sharp.

"Shawn, I will punch you in the face if you don't shut it." Juliet tilted her head to the side with a sweet smile, her eyelashes batting. She sounded kind, but he knew she meant it.

Lassiter tapped the bumper three times, causing the little Prius to spin into the Hancock Beach parking lot. The car stopped, knowing the game was over.

Lassiter removed his gun from the holster and opened the door, ducking behind it in case the suspects were armed. "Get out of the vehicle with your hands up!" he shouted, ready if they tried to pull something.

They did as were told and even got on the ground.

"O'Hara, take these gloves and check the car. Start with the trunk." Lassiter ordered, and Juliet was more than happy to comply.

"Gus, come take a look at this." Juliet called, staring down a brief case filled with small pill bottles.

"Where are you boys from?" Lassiter questioned as Gus went from one car to the other.

"We're just college students, man. We're from downstate. We're just here for school." One of the two said nervously, obviously full of crap.

"This is heavy stuff, Lassiter. They could make one serious cocktail here." Gus eyed the contents of the case.

"Any metacynein? Our guy at the lab found more than trace elements in the vic." Lassiter squared away the two suspects who were looking more and more like they would be seeing a court room.

"Two vials right here." Juliet held them up, gloves still on. "Looks like we got our guys."

 **Chapter 10**

"You guys put a lot of joules in just to get got down the road." Shawn told them, leaning on the table.

"How did you find us? Hancock and Houghton were supposed to be easy pickings. We sure didn't expect to be double crossed." One of them said, scratching his thin, whispy beard that Shawn wanted to tear off.

"A bit of physics, bit of lifted prints, and a lot of good old detective work." Juliet smiled from the back of the room.

"I think we have all we need from them." Lassiter stood them up and brought them back to holding.

"I didn't expect our vic to have been a dealer too." Juliet said, stepping closer to the number and vocab minded sleuth.

"Foul play isn't usually a consequence of being a saint, Jules." Shawn chuckled quietly. "Sometimes it's money issues, or love, or because your black best friend stole your Hank Aaron baseball card."

"Shawn, don't kill Gus please." Juliet frowned, though she knew he was rambling as always.

 **Chapter 11**

Gus opened the door and a faint beep sounded across the dorm room. "Shawn?" Gus called, walking over to the laptop monitor to where the sound had seemed to come from.

"Oh, hey buddy." Shawn walked in from the bed room, going to the computer and reading _0 KE detected._ "Do me a favor? Go do some jumping jacks in front of the monitor?"

"Why would I do that, Shawn?" Gus's eyebrows pursed together.

"Me and Travis hooked up a camcorder and he did some sweet rigging. Now we have a kinetic energy reader!"

"I'm not going to be a guinea pig for your little radar, Shawn. Get Juliet or Travis to do it." Gus was as stubborn as Shawn was bored.

Shawn rolled his eyes and huffed, giving up on his friend. "I just wanted to measure how many meters per second you did jumping jacks in..." he trailed off, sounding defeated.

Sharing a dorm with an engineer and a physics student did come with some complications. "What about when we make a gravitational potential energy reader? We haven't figured that one out yet, but we'd love to have you as one of our mass and height variables. Gravity however... that's a constant." Shawn explained, tilting his head in thought. Suddenly he stiffened when the microwave dinged and lunch was ready. Gus had never seen Shawn have that kind of velocity before.

"How's your energy conservation recycler coming?" Gus asked honestly curious. Recycled energy means less new, less bills. Gus was on board for that.

"Well, we've safely insulated the microwave and refrigerator to keep temperatures constant. We can make more effective, but we'd need less powerful appliances." Shawn was happy with the successful insulating, but not about having to find a way to lower watts.

"Shawn, I noticed something off about the Blueberry." Gus referred to the nickname of the little Toyota Echo that definitely resembled the name.

"If you're talking about your new dope shocks, you're welcome." Shawn tossed a hot pizza roll at his friend, who skillfully caught it in his mouth. "You're also going to have custom bumpers in the next three to five business days." Shawn popped one of the delicious treats into his own mouth.

"What are you and Travis doing to my car, Shawn?" Gus trusted Shawn and the exchange kid as far as he could throw their combined weight.

"Bumper cars. It's fun, and think of the car accidents you'll be totally fine in. Elastic collision, man. You hit the guy or visa versa, you bounce off and little harm done."

"Shawn, you have problems." Gus stated flatly.

"Yeah, a whole bunch of them if I ever want this to go well." Shawn shook off and applied to his own issues not related to mental health.

 **Chapter 12**

"Shawn, are you ho... whaaa!" Juliet shrieked, ducking low and almost falling to the floor. She stood up and saw the little blob behind her on the hallway wall. "What the Hell was that?" Juliet demanded, pointing back behind her.

"Yeah, um... that's a little experiment I made. Sorry it almost killed you. And if it makes you feel better, it didn't work." Shawn apologized but dodged her question.

"What was this... experiment, Shawn?" Juliet closed the door behind her and stepped further into the lab that was once a living quarters.

"I may or may not have stolen some precious metal scraps from the metallurgy lab. And I may also have brought them to their melting points after finding their heats of fusion. I brought them to a boil, stirred 'em up a bit to have good and mixed. I took it off heat, and as the metals began to cool in my new uber-precious metal, it just shot out of the containment and attacked the wall." Shawn threw his arms up, just a little pissed that it didn't stay. "It was cool to watch, though." he said as a smile began to form.

"How can you get those temperatures on a simple house stove?" She shouldn't have asked that...

"Oh Jules, sweet naive Jules. You're standing in the dorm room of a chemist, engineer and a physicist. You practically walked into a joke." Shawn laughed as if he'd just told a hilarious joke. "See that treadmill over there? We took it and made a reverse heat engine out of it. We take it's mechanical energy, harness it and turn it to thermal. Then we pump it into our oven like a blacksmith billows for super heat."

"Does it make cooking quick and easy?" Juliet asked with suggestive voice.

"Ms. O'Hara, would you like to stay for dinner?" Shawn asked with a cheeky smile, catching on yo her implication.

"I'd love to." Juliet beamed. She loved to see Shawn's growing collection of random inventions and alterations he made with his friends. She rarely ever understood the figures he showed her, but they were still fun to watch. Another bonus was that Shawn Spencer's company couldn't be beat.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Shawn asked pleasantly, removing a squirt bottle of Mio and a cloudy looking substance from the fridge.

"Shawn, what is that?" Juliet's eyes grew wide at the semi-transparent liquid. Her voice couldn't hide the nervousness as Shawn squirted in the Mio concentrate, and it barely dispersed throughout the liquid.

"This, my dear Juliet, is my own personal concoction." Shawn showed it off as if he was a salesman. "I have devised a liquid based off water and gelatin. The entire point of it is to be quite viscous yet liquid and tasteless. Not how the Mio moves SO slowly if at all. With the help of Gus, I have created an entropy stopper." Juliet had rarely seen him so proud.

She hated to ask, but felt the need. "Um, I'm really not trying to rain on your parade, but why is it such a big deal?"

Shawn's face fell and he clutched his chest as if stabbed. "Come on, Jules. There's so much I could do with this. Here's the example the average Jack will care about. Soda or beer, right? Add ice, over time it gets watered down. Not anymore with Dentropy! No random delusion if the ice is in a Dentropy solution."

"There are some mechanic issues I can see, but it could work." she nodded her head in agreement.

"Yeah, I'm still working on some issues. It's in beta..." Shawn trailed off, not sure where to go with the slipping conversation. _Why does she keep hanging out? Cool girl and a social nerd, how's that work?_ Shawn questioned himself in his head.

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

 **Chapter 13**

 _Jules, Gus! Fire down town, let's go!_ Shawn sent the small group message over Facebook.

 _I have class in ten minutes, Shawn. I can't just skip._ Even over Facebook, Gus was just as annoying.

 _I'll be there._ Juliet responded, followed by a smiley face. Nothing brought people together like a good fire.

 _See Gus, Jules is coming. Don't be Boot Strap Bill from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest._

 _Fine, but just this once. And you're doing my homework!_

By the time they had all gathered, the firemen had battled most of the flame. The Vollwerth's factory fire would be a big case.

"Ready to do some shopping?" Shawn asked, looking at Juliet and Gus through a pair of "scratched" Oakley's sunglasses he'd bought at a highly reduced price.

"Let's do this." Juliet held a firm face, the aviator shades giving an extra poker effect.

"There should be a gas gauge on the side somewhere..." Shawn suggested, scanning around.

"I got it over here." Gus picked up the glass face that must have been blown off.

"This wasn't just a fire, it started as an explosion." Juliet noted, looking at the damage and scattered debris.

"Can we find a gas pressure gage? Did it break, or was it accidentally broken?" Shawn raised an eyebrow under his sunglasses. "We need to find the reason for the increased force over the gas system, giving the building the pressure to blow." Shawn's hands hung at his side but his fingers wiggled for no reason. He was an odd man when on a case.

"Shawn, this gas gage is all messed up. The needle is all the way down to the right. There was more than enough Pascals to blow this place." Gus informed his partner in attempting to solve crime.

"Nice one, buddy." Shawn praised his friend and turned to Juliet. "Okay Jules, if this was on purpose, what would be the biggest motive to blow this place."

"A pissed worker, a market competitor, a crazy good insurance claim is a lot less likely." Juliet thought aloud.

"Okay, good. It's good to have a thought, but we can't exactly go after these people ourselves. We're going to have to hope on Lassie." Shawn concluded.

"Let's come back tomorrow. Let me come with one of my kits." Gus suggested, the wheels rolling above.

"You think someone tampered the supply itself?" Juliet asked, eyebrows pursed together in a line.

"Maybe. This doesn't smell right to me. And if we're feeling foul play, I have my suspicions. If he put a more flammable, buoyant gas that rose above the usual supply, that could have caused the spark." Gus brain stormed aloud. "I can test chemical components and see if it's more than one kind of gas."

"Let's put some Bernoulli's on this. Maybe they cut supply flow, slowing velocity causing built up pressure allowing it to blow." Shawn suggested. "Could it have been two adhesive gases?" Shawn was grabbing at straws, not being the chemist major himself. "The two gases mix and mingle instead of one rising, it's like a double whammy when it goes off."

"WHAMMY!" Juliet yelled out in a deep voice, very uncharacteristic of her character and small, cute blonde frame. That just added to the comic effect it left on the trio of investigators.

"Anchorman 2 Sports reel, so good!" Shawn laughed doubled over, gasping for breath between each deep laugh.

It took a while for the group to recover and get back to business. "Gus buddy, we should do this tonight. Let's get what we can before it all spaces out, diffuses and evaporates. These gases aren't going to stay contained for very long."

"We can hope for condensation. Maybe the gas is volatile, maybe it won't disperse all that quickly." Gus argued, really not tapping to deep today.

"Dude, we have a crime to solve. Can you please drop the class act for a while?" Shawn pleaded. "Are you just mad because we didn't find any plasma?" Shawn asked with a raised eyebrow.

"None of the gases conducted electricity then, so it wasn't an electric fire. We can rule out mercury and sodium vapor then..." Gus tagged back in briefly before tapping out. "Stop it Shawn. Stop distracting me from getting an education!"

"Dude, how can you focus with this stuff going on? You're the best in that class anyway. You can afford to take a hit!" Shawn fought to keep his partner.

"He's right Shawn. He should get back to class. College is stressful and you don't want to fall behind."

"Thank you, Juliet." Gus nodded in her direction and smiled.

"Nerd." Juliet couldn't resist throwing in a cheap shot.

"You all can suck it! Suck my 3.7 GPA!" Gus shouted as he stormed off.

"Damn it, Gus! Your hesitation and need to be nerdy has just thrown a huge wrench in the system. It got cold last night and the gas formed a crystal lattice!"

"Meaning..." Juliet wondered, physics and chemistry not being her thing.

"It froze." Gus said mildly. "We'll just thaw it in a controlled environment, relax Shawn."

"This stuff better have some pretty dope elasticity, Gus." Shawn threatened as he put on his lab gloves, taking a sample and bagging it before inserting it into a cooler.

"It's a gas, Shawn. Of coarse it will go back to original form. A bit of thermal expansion, and we'll be fine." Gus stood up for himself, arms crossed.

"But then it's going to lose density and rise to the ceiling. Last I checked, you couldn't fly." Shawn beeped his nose for no apparent reason.

 **Chapter 14**

 _"_ Hey Gus, where's Shawn?" Juliet asked warmly, letting herself into their dorm. She practically lived there when her classes were done.

"He's playing in the bath." Gus let it go and thought it'd be fun to let her work it out.

"With like, rubber duckies and stuff?" Juliet's eyebrow quirked up. She didn't know how to take it.

"Sometimes. He enjoys making different kinds of waves. He brought in a slinky this time." Gus said neutrally, not surprised by much these days. "Longitudinal are his favorite. He's told me." Gus ecplained for the sake of conversation, no matter how weird it was. It was on Shawn, not him so why should he care?

"Doesn't he get bored?" Juliet, still a little weirded out by his antics.

"He's tired of surface waves, transverse and longitudinal, but he's trying to master wave pulsing with the water. It's not going well. It keeps turning into a traveling wave."

" _Damn it! One disturbance, just one!"_ Shawn's frustration could be heard from the living room.

It was quite some time before Shawn finally came out of the bathroom, his hair was still damp and out of control. "Hey Jules." Shawn greeted evenly before stopping, turning his head to see Gus and Juliet with matching smirks at his ignorance. He looked down to realize a towel was all he had. His face went incredibly red and he high taiked it to his room.

"Shawn's in better shape than I thought." Juliet comment between light giggles.

"He doesn't even work out. He said he controls his metabolism through meditation." Shawn had as many oddball theories as Sherlock Holmes. They were quite similar, he had to admit. "How's the wave pulse coming?" Gus asked for a subject change.

"I think if I could control the period, I could control the frequency. Frequency is one divided by time, time is the period. If I can get the frequency, maybe I can control wave number." Shawn rambled a lot, but it let Juliet know what was going on upstairs, so she liked it. She liked hearing his crazy little ideas. He wasn't a brain dead jock. He wasn't bad looking for a nerd either. Really good for a nerd, actually...

"Juliet, Earth to Juliet!" Shawn called, snapping his fingers in front of her to break her musings.

"Hmm?" she snapped back to reality.

"Want to stay for dinner? I'm feeling pasta, but not sure on the specifics.

"Have I ever turned down a dinner invite, Shawn?"

"Yes." Shawn told her plainly, remembering many a situation.

"Shawn, what are you doing with that bread stick?" Juliet asked, holding it vertically in the pot of sauce while he maneuvered a wooden spoon.

"I can use this breadstick to measure the crests of the sauce. I can't measure troughs, but theoretically they're the same height as the crests."

"Is there anything you don't turn into a science experiment?" Juliet asked, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, but now isn't the time to talk about that." Shawn told her mischievously, flicking a small drop of spaghetti sauce on her nose.

"Check this out." Shawn pointed out to her, whipping the spoon back and forth rapidly. "If you go between ripple to ripple, you can get the wavelength, but if you look at crest to crest, you get amplitude. Try to apply the amplitude part next time you listen to music." Shawn explained another page in his world.

"Shawn, I got the results from the lab back. You were right, the gases were cohesive." Gus turned the Xbox off, much to the dismay of his partner. "Lassiter also found a phone at the scene. It still worked but he wouldn't give me the phone. We'll have to listen to the voicemail at the station."

"There's a message? Can we write it out in alphabet soup?" Shawn asked oddly serious for that kind of question.

"What, no. Um, maybe? Let's just go!" Gus wasn't sure how to answer that one, but he wanted to wrap this thing up. It had taken up enough of his time already.

Shawn set down the headset and shook his head. "There's nothing here. There's too much interference. We have to clear up the wave superposition, there's too many waves working together."

"Do we have a tech guy we can call?" Gus asked, hoping to move things along.

"Maybe he can get these in order, clear it up. Make something constructive instead of audio pin ball over here." Shawn lightly dropped his fist on the equipment.

"Maybe the fire just fried it too bad." Lassiter suggested, not wanting to take the nerd route they always went.

"It's possible. I'd believe it." Shawn agreed. "The heat could have damaged the phone components, causing the sound waves to hit obstacles, and then WHAMMY! Diffraction and destructive interference.

 **"** Sergeant Lassiter." The chief entered without as much as a knock. "This case of yours, it's over."

"What do you mean, chief?" Lassiter asked. "What happened?"

"The fire marshal deemed it an accident. You don't have a case. And send these two yahoos home." The chief pointed to Gus and Shawn before making his exit.

"Well that was anticlimactic." Shawn rubbed a hand through his meticulously sstyled hair.

 **Chapter 16**

"Shawn, what are you wearing?" Juliet had to laugh at the ridiculous black goggles Shawn had on.

"These are my Light Goggles. I can pick up frequency ranges of electromagnetic waves the retina can't usually catch. Wanna try them?" Shawn asked her excitedly.

Juliet took them off his head and placed it on her own head.

"You should be able to see the entire ray model, red to violet. These goggles are dope though, because the rays are do intense!"

"This is really pretty, Shawn. It's like seeing the world through a collidescope. How did you and Travis get such detailed rays? Most of the time they're so broad." Juliet asked. Usually she didn't dig so deep, but she really liked this divide. It was like living in a rainbow.

"With a lot of ray optics and ray diagrams, other calculations and breaking Gus's binoculars." he admitted.

"Light's around you but not coming from you." Juliet stated, but it came off as more of a question.

Shawn laughed before explaining. "Didn't you ever take a physics class, Jules. I'm illuminated, lights around me and on me, but light isn't coming from me because I'm not luminous."

"I took chemistry instead of physics. I can screw in a light bulb, but I'm not going to tell you why the filaments work." Juliet shrugged. Shawn was going to give her this one, because she spent all of her time in Rajdl's Life Science classes.

"I've been working with Gus's favorite lamp over here, I'm trying to get Travis to help me jack up it's luminous flux, or the rate light pours out of this bad boy." Shawn patted the lamp affectionately. God only knows how much of Gus's things "disappeared" around the dorm.

"How do you plan to get more lumens out of it?" Juliet flicked the light on, the beam seeming more concentrated if not brighter. She read a light bulb box once so she could appreciate it a little.

"The illuminance is what we're trying to get up, how many lumens oer square meter. We've got that, that's why it's a beam instead of a normal light. Now we need to go Tim Allen on it and give it more power." Shawn did his best evil genius laugh.

"You're such a nerd." Juliet rolled her eyes and pushed on his chest.

"You love it." Shawn joked back, a smirk playing on his face. "We're not wasting time on candelas though. Candles have no power. Luminous intensity is already being covered by our illuminance and luminous flux projects."

"Any other bright ideas, Captain Edison?" Juliet smirked. Shawn had shown her all of his current pieces, but he always had something new upstairs. It amazed her how he could keep all the ideas in order. Or maybe he didn't...

"I want to break light, but I don't see that being a thing anytime soon." Shawn over the back of the couch he had been previously on. He forgot about the hydraulics Travis added, making jumping on it an easier ride.

"You want to break light?" Juliet questioned, taking a suspicious look on her face.

"Everyone knows the whole ROYGBIV thing, but I want to have a controlled experiment where I can rearrange the spectrum. I want BOYGIVR" Shawn imitated a rainbow shape with his hands as if he could already see it.

"How are you gonna do that?" she asked in genuine curiosity, resting her chin on her hands.

"Not a clue." Shawn kicked his feet up on the table and rested his hands behind his head.

Juliet put the goggles back on and sat next him on the couch. She reached for the TV remote.

"No don't do that!" Shawn tried to warn her. It was too late.

Juliet shrieked when the harsh light and colors of the TV met the goggles. "Too intense!"

"Yeah, I need to put some polarizing film on that... Same amount of colors with less burning." Shawn commented, taking the goggles from her head and turning off the TV.

 **Chapter 17**

"Run faster Gus! We don't have long!" Shawn sprinted through campus and continued down to main street. Gus hated the usual after rain ritual.

"Shawn, we've never caught it... and never will." Gus panted between deep breaths. "You're out of... you're damn mind!" Gus continued to struggle.

"I'm going to find the end of the damn rainbow!" Shawn shouted, never letting the prize escape from him. "Refraction says I can't, but Disney's Luck of the Irish says I totally can!"

"Shawn? Gus?" Juliet called ahead of them from the sidewalk. "What are you guys doing?" Juliet had never seen Shawn run so hard.

"We're chasing the end of the rainbow." Shawn stopped out of breath.

"We don't have much time. Get in!" Juliet ordered, stepping back into the green Volkswagen.

"Light hitting another medium like raindrops usually make a diffuse reflection, sending light everywhere, making the source illusive. Not this time, I'm hunting it down, Jules."

"How long have rainbows been Shawn's white whales?" Juliet asked Gus, Shawn not being in his right mind currently.

"Since he say Luck of the Irish." Gus said flatly, now just along for the ride.

"Maybe we can play this by regular reflection. Pot of gold, right? Gold coins are smoothish, aren't they? We find where the light bends and we follow it straight to the gold!" Shawn shouted in triumph. "Optical density doesn't mean jack... wait!" Shawn's mind went to work, attempting to use the speed of light and direction of the sun to calculate refraction affect and remaining time of the rainbow.

"Any numbers, Shawn?" Juliet asked, taking her eyes off the road long enough to gage his expression.

"I don't have an exact figure, but we don't have long." Shawn said gravely. "I can't get an accurate figure on where the gold is, because I don't have angle of incidence and refraction. Damn arcing rainbow!" Shawn cursed. "Suck it Snell, suck geometry!"

"We're not going to find it, Juliet, we might as well turn around." Gus said tiredly.

"Gus, don't be Sean Bean In National Treasure. You know what, don't be Nicholas Cage either." Shawn scolded. "We're going to have to rely on me being Irish on this one."

"Shawn, you're not even Irish!" Gus dismissed.

"No, but Juliet is." Shawn pointed to the blonde currently driving like a pursuit artist.

"I'm Scottish, Shawn." Juliet corrected, never taking her eyes from the road.

"Well now we're just plaid screwed." Shawn threw his hands up in defeat. "That and the rainbow is getting fainter and fainter. We didn't even get a double rainbow. Is running my hand through some light despersuon too much to ask for? Science says I can't get a fist full of yellow, but rainbow says do it up son!"

Juliet stopped the car and hung her head low. Shawn looked out the side window to see the rainbow had gone. "It was right there! Come on!" Shawn's imagination and love of myths had again been kicked in the dirt by hard physics.

 **Chapter 18**

"Sergeant Lassie, haven't seen you in a while!" Shawn greeted the older man happily.

"Spencer, how'd you and Guster even get in here?" Lassiter questioned, turning around in his office chair and minizing the security footage.

"We heard about the Citgo robbery, got bored and decided to come on over." Shawn explained, not answering how they got in though.

"It's pretty cut and dry Spencer, me and O'Hara have this one." Lassiter said confidently.

"What, you take her now and don't even invite us?" Shawn played offended.

"Sorry Shawn." Juliet shrugged apologetically with a frown. "The security tape makes it pretty clear though. We have the guy right there."

"No, zoom in and fix the focus. He's looking at something." Shawn pointed out. It's in the building, he's scared."

"Shawn, what's that one the window? It looks like a blur." Gus pointed the a foggy blob shape on the window. "That's the reflection of something."

"Spencer, as much as I hate saying it, and I mean REALLY hate saying it, but I think you're right."

"We can't tell what he's looking at from this real image. There IS a source, but we can't tell what it is yet." Shawn explained. "Lassie take a recording of that somehow and lets find what we're looking at."

"This is a flat surface reflection, so we're looking at straight line of sight. On the video his head was straight, not looking up or down." Shawn took the masking tape and made a line from where he stood to the window. He took out a Sharpie and wrote **P** where the suspect stood. "P, is where he stood. The letter 'I' is the reflection." Shawn said slowly as he made his mark. "The hard part is, where is 'O', the object. The dude or thing."

"He can't just be right across on the other side? Complete the straight line?" Lassiter really didn't feel like being here, but he had to be there to get them access.

"No Lassie, crime is never that simple. Neither is physics. If it was all straight line, we wouldn't have seen the reflection, S1 or suspect one, would have blocked the shot. S2 was standing off to the side." Shawn motioned to the entire unshot area.

"So there was either a partner, or he was put up to it, forced." Juliet brain stormed. "We'll think about the motive later."

"For there to be an image on a plane mirror... The object is the source. It's a straight line... Gus I'm an idiot! I don't need the suspect's viewpoint! I need the image's, but that still doesn't make any sense!"

Shawn replayed the video in his mind. The suspect was looking to his right. Shawn craned his head. "He was looking at the manager who just came out of the bathroom." Shawn turned left. The reflection was just of someone watching outside. Probably just a bistander filling up his tank!" Shawn three the tape down and pulled his hair with both hands. "I was so sure there was something here... that's two in a row I've been wrong." Shawn sulked out the door, his head hung low.

"Why's Shawn so down about this?" Juliet asked, never having seen him like that.

"It's about his dad, I think. Shawn feels destined to be a teacher or professor, just like his dad was and said Shawn would be. He's trying to break out, find something else to use his skills at that won't keep him locked up in an office." Gus spoke for his childhood friend.

"Jules, what's wrong?" Shawn came back into the living room with two cups of steaming coffee.

Juliet sat on the couch, eyes closed and rubbing her temples fiercely. "I have a headache, it's no big deal, Shawn. It's just this old book I'm reading for one of my classes. The words are uber small and the pages are huge. It's like trying to read the first Bible."

"Do you wear reading glasses or contacts?" Shawn asked, sitting next to her and sipping his coffee.

"No, it's this one book that was made for magnifying glasses."

"Would you be interested in my latest"

"Yes!" Juliet interrupted. If this new invention caused cancer, she would take that risk over her eyes burning out of her head.

"I made a decently powerful magnifying glass, but in contacts. You can't even tell you're wearing them, but they do the job, Jules. Travis was a huge help on this one."

Shawn disappeared and came back with a velvit ring box. "The lenses are made of a very light transparent plastic. They're convex so they focus for a bigger image." Shawn very carefully handed them to her. "If you lose these, I'm not making another. The hand work is SO delicate and I'm tired of finding one over focal length."

"Wow Shawn, this must have taken forever." Juliet eyed the little pieces closely.

"Rounding the edges but still giving it a comfortable fit was difficult. I could have left the chromatic aberration, but I figured you didn't want to read through a rainbow, so..." Shawn shrugged and smiled.

What was that look her face though? He'd seen flashes of it before, but it stayed this time. "Um, everything okay Jules?"

"Everything's fine, Shawn." Her face fell back to the usual happy smile she wore, the complacent, dreamy look in her eyes was gone.

 **Chapter 20**

"Shawn, how did you get up there?" Gus called from the window to Shawn, who sat on the roof in the pouring rain. "What are you doing up there?"

"Enjoying the show, Gus." Shawn stood up, arms spread wide, enjoying the cold rain soaking his body. Lightning cracked and danced across the dark sky. "Can you imagine what it would be like, having one of those mega fire crackers straining through your body? Feeling that power?"

Gus didn't trust were Shawn was going with this. He had always been a little unstable, but he'd ge'd never stood on the edge of a building and marveled at a death experience. "Shawn, get down from there!" Gus ordered.

"It's just frictional energy, buddy. Nothing to worry about." Shawn closed his eyes and tilted his face to the glowing skies. "I feel like Ian McCellan in the X-Men. If I could harness electrostatics, collect and hold them and do what I wanted... try telling me that wouldn't be dope!"

"Shawn, stay there. I'm going to get help." Gus ducked back inside and went for the phone.

"I don't need help, Gus!"

"Shawn, I'm coming up, okay?" Juliet slowly climbed out the window and reached the slippery ledge. Shawn's wet but strong hand grasped hers and pulled her up.

"Jules, what are you doing here?" Shawn looked at her with worry in her eyes.

"I'm here for you Shawn, Gus called me and said you needed help." Juliet took him by the shoulders and sat him down. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Juliet." Shawn looked at her with genuine confusion.

"Can we go inside where you're not a giant human conductor? You're not metal, but you're a good target for the storm." Juliet pleaded.

"I don't know... it's so pretty up here, and the rain feels good. And I think I don't have to worry about it. My shoes have rubber bottoms, that's a good insulator, right? Electricity won't like me." Shawn argued. Why was everyone trying to take his roof from him.

"Inside's neutral, no preference. Let's go." Shawn yielded at her request and slinked down into the apartment, shaking like a dog.

"We were like an electroscope out there, except we didn't have a metal knob..." Shawn tried to joke, not feeling like talking about anything real.

"It's not too late for us to stick together though." Juliet flirted more than usual that day, and Gus left the room, feeling awkward.

"Have you ever heard of charged by conduction, Jules?" Shawn wasn't backing down yet.

"No, tell me, Mr. Spencer." Juliet said quietly, stepping towards the soaking wet scholar.

"It's charging a neutral body by touching it with a charged body..." their faces were inches apart.

"Quit the nerd talk and ask her out already, Shawn!" Gus slammed his door, effectively ending the game.

"So Jules, what do you think of Gus's idea?" Shawn smirked and opened his arms as if offering her a grand deal.

"I may be a little cloudy on this..." she said with a smile, telling Shawn she really did get it.

"Let's not be inductive charging. Let's not be separated and have equal but negative charges. Let's come together, be a couple, Jules! Let's share a charge. Go out with me, Jules."

That was easily the nerdiest date proposal ever, but it was 100% Shawn. She loved it in his adorable, dorky way.

 **XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX**

 **To the readers that follow me, I bet you all thought I stopped, but this gave me more trouble than i imagined, and regular updates of my other two stories will begin again shortly. Hope you enjoyed this, and excuse me while I graduate highschool next week!**


End file.
